One useful way to look at cesarean born
people is to consider them to have a different native culture,
native in the literal sense of having to do with birth, ie. natal.
While not much work has been done with this concept, here are
a few beginnings.

In trying to edit my journal writings for the book, Different
Doorway, I find myself feeling frustrated. I can't find a
way to feel good about cutting out much of the descritpions of
the the body processes out of which the insights emerged. Just
now I lay on the floor a while feeling all this, releasing painful
places in my body -- places I'd been trying to edit out??!!

Then I remembered Tom Ednie speaking of the difficulty of using
language to describe preverbal perinatal experiences. I am trying
to write in a foreign language -- the words that have been formed
by millennia of vaginally born people!!!

So I have to go back to body language to make sense -- literally
use the senses! I am trying to communicate to your body as well
as to your mind. You have to be willing to feel in your body what
I say, before you try to comprehend it with your mind. So read
slowly and pay attention to body.

Apples and Bananas
- a visual metaphor

-

The comparison between caesarean birth and vaginal birth can
teach us a great deal. Until about 100 years ago the vast majority
of people were born vaginally. "Birth" meant "vaginal
birth." A metaphor that I use for this is: If the only kind
of fruit we knew were apples, we probably wouldn't have two words.
We'd have one word that meant "fruit-apple." Then a
banana appears, and our sense of what fruit is expands. It becomes
more abstract and is not tied to the particulars of either form
of fruit, apple or banana. During the whole history of the human
race part of being human was the journey down the birth canal.
Now, an increasingly large percentage of humans are born caesarean;
they don't go down the birth canal. Bananas have joined the apples.
We have an opportunity to become aware of a deeper level of humanness
that transcends both kinds of birth learning, the patterns learned
in caesarean birth and the patterns learned in vaginal birth.
-- from Different Doorway, p.136

Anthropology
and Cesarean Birth: Some Research Ideas - Jane English
1986

Introduction

During the inner journey that led to the writing and publication
of Different Doorway; Adventures of a Caesarean
Born, one of the perspectives that emerged for me was
to consider caesarean born people, especially those born with
no labor at all, as having a somewhat different native culture
- native in the most literal sense of deriving from birth.

Our social, political and cultural forms are based on similarities
among people. It seems likely that one of the deepest levels of
similarity is the birth experience, labor and the trip down the
birth canal. So in some way human social structures are probably
based on vaginal birth learning. When cesarean born people are
viewed as being from a different culture, one gets perspective
both on that culture and on the culture of the vaginally born.
This can lead to a more expansive view of human nature.

The idea of a cesarean native culture had more than intellectual
significance for me; it brought healing, the release of negative
judgments about some experienced differences between caesarean
born people and most of the rest of society. Caesarean born people
are a minority, but with about 20% of all births now being caesarean,
we are a sizable minority that needs to be considered.

Psychological studies of caesareans are beginning to be made,
but I feel that anthropology too has something to contribute.
Anthropology looks at a larger social/ cultural picture, and anthropology
has a less pathology-oriented approach.

Some questions to consider

1) Is there a caesarean native culture? What are its symbols,
myths, and world views? What does it contribute to the whole of
humanity?

2) Do caesareans have problems in common with other minorities
in a dominant culture?

3) Look at caesareans in different national cultures. What
talents and what difficulties appear among caesareans in each
culture. Get a view of caesarean native culture by seeing which
national cultures they fit into most easily and which they have
the most difficulty with.

4) Is a caesarean native culture just another culture or is
it a "meta-culture" pointing by contrast to the meta-culture
of the vaginally born, to commonalities that all national cultures
share and have been considered simply as part of "being human"?
eg. caesarean born kindergarten children have been observed to
tend to "sit outside the circle". Do they do this in
all national cultures?

Approaches to use

1) Traditional anthropological research - statistics and studies
on, "Is there a caesarean native culture, and if so, what
is it?"

2) Anthropology as an awareness practice. Awareness of differences
allows one to transcend them. Use the tools of anthropology to
create perspectives that caesareans, their families, and their
associates might find healing and growth enhancing. Value the
usefulness of concepts more than their statistical validity.

Doing the research

The people doing this research will most likely experience
all the joys and trials of doing work in a new area, will have
the satisfaction of helping people,and, especially if the researchers
are themselves caesarean born, will find personal growth and healing.
There is need for a broad perspective on the psychological, social,
and spiritual aspects of life .

I am interested in playing a supporting and consulting role.
My own desires are to share the excitement of exploration and
to see some seed concepts that have been healing to me be amplified
and passed on to others.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Angeles Arrien for her support in keeping these
ideas alive over the past few years, and to Lisa Faithorn for
our discussions on Mt. Diablo that led to their clear formulation.

Comments by Stan
Grof after drumming with Jane English for a shamanic
journey following her slide presentation on caesarean birth at
one of his Holotropic Breathwork trainings -- Sept 1988

I enjoyed the drumming very much, I had never drummed this
way before. There was a lot of one-pointed consciousness because
you have to be sure you don't interfere with the other person...
a different kind of attention than when you have a whole big drum
like a Taos drum. So for me there was a lot of concentrated energy,
then loosening, loosening and expanding, and I got into a very
peaceful place towards the end. I was in an extremely expanded
place after the powerful concentration.

Then these things related to caesarean... I came to things
from the Kyoto transpersonal conference first. There was a presentation
there that I thought was a breakthrough in the transpersonal movement.
A Japanese Jungian analyst talked about the relationship between
the Japanese mind and the Western Mind, business problems between
Japan and the US. There were these negotiations and he was watching
them from a Jungian point of view. He was trained in Switzerland
and had quite a lot of insight into the Western psyche. He watched
them (the negotiators) and said that they don't realize that they
don't communicate at all. They are exchanging words, but each
of them means something totally different because of the difference
between the Japanese and Western psyches.

He gave a paper on this. The whole western culture has the
idea of creation as coming from a powerful center, God, a powerhouse.
Whereas the Oriental psyche has the creation out of a void; the
center is empty. And this makes a lot of difference.

There was also a Zulu anthropologist and shaman who gave a
talk on the difference between the African psyche and the Western
psyche. There was also Andre Pantsalides(sp?) who was born in
the Near East, in Syria, and living in Belgium. He gave a talk
on the Arabic mind and the Western mind. Again there were incredible
differences.

The reason I thought these talks were such an incredible contribution
is that we can introduce these into the transpersonal movement
and start connecting to some underlying basic humanity and see
these (cultural psyches) as inflections rather than each one saying,
"We are right, and those others are distorted world views
that we'll study anthropologically."

And when I saw Jane's slide of apples and
bananas I got a similar sense of the caesarean and the vaginally
born. Then this whole concept of contraction-and expansion became
what we can learn from each other. Somebody who was born vaginally
ends up with a lot of unnecessary constriction, limitations and
concerns, that then complicate their life. And a caesarean is
born with a lack of boundaries (a non-labor caesarean!)

So the caesarean can teach the vaginally born that a certain
degree of boundaries is unnecessary. And the vaginally born can
show the caesarean the usefulness of limits. So in my drawing
the vaginally born is pushing on the caesarean, showing them limits.
And the caesarean is pulling the vaginally born free of the constriction.

Stanislav Grof, MD,PhD is a psychiatrist who for over
thirty years has researched non-ordinary states of consciousness.
One of the founders of transpersonal psychology, he is founder
of Holotropic Breathwork,
and is author of numerous books and articles.